Quality of Life in Games
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- Let's talk about QOL. Light gameplay spoilers for the 3D Zelda games!
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21:25 I personally loved having to sit thru an unskippable 5 min cutscene before a boss fight in Kingdom Hearts. Made dying that much more fun
LEAD ME INTO EVERLASTING DARKNESS!
Kairi... Kairi's inside me?
I love your mustache, it looks awesome! I'm down to watch whole video!
Greatly appreciated 😎
i like that you filmed yourself in this one, felt more personal and im excited for your next video.
Thanks!
I noticed that you've lost weight. You look completely different now. In good way ;)
Thanks!!
FACE REVEAL NOW ? ... DAMN PEYTON ! HECK YEAH
😎
Excellent video! You were well spoken and I will make sure to check out your RPG tutorials
Thanks so much!!
The legend is back! And handsomeness reveal!?! Also totally agree with you.
Woah! Never seen your face before! Exquisite mustache! :D I think that mandatory cutscenes COULD be important if... hypothetically speaking, there was important information in said cutscene that was randomized every new game or something... not that I could think of any examples. Plus, most game developers would probably advise against that kind of design. Thanks for these discussion videos, I think they're fun, and I'll be sure to snag a copy of Starcross Starcade Special the instant it drops!
Oh I like that I think that's a great example! But as far as I'm concerned, that *would* actually be gameplay since it's variable and contains important information for the player regardless if the presentation looks like a traditional cutscene. I do think that would be kind of frustrating if the purpose was SOLELY to force the player to watch a cutscene, but if it was a lot of important randomized information I feel like it'd be the equivalent of taking a comprehension or critical thinking quiz, in which case the dialogue or text would be the basis of the challenge and gameplay
I love that you mentioned Celeste! I would love Mario maker 2 so much more if it didn't take forever upon death!
YES mario maker was one of the exact things i had in mind 😭
Love your videos!
A great moustache for a great man keep it up big man love the content!!!
RE: the cutcene skipping as a QOL feature, I've got thoughts.
My issue is not with the presence or absence of the feature rather my stance comes from a more fundamenta place, and it's the simple fact that such an statement (that skipping cutscenes is a universally good feature) has the potential of becoming a both performative and cognitive barrier. I don't know what it looks like, but I also don't have the confidence to say that there doesn't exist an idea/concept/emotion/feeling that couldn't be exploited (for the benefit of the player experience) by not allowing the player to skip cutscenes. I would say an auto-save feature falls in a similar category of seeming like a no-brainer, but Undertale wouldn't have the impact that it has on the player if it wasn't at least partly on the fact that it uses the apparent lack of it's presence as a key element of the experience.
If adding a skip-cutscene feature becomes something that is generally accepted to always be the correct thing to do, I wonder if it would discourage people from trying to create interesting ideas because it's something that should always be there and if it isn't you're gonna get called out for it. I think that you got it right for the rest of the video: each game is it's own world created with a vision and intent in mind (in the best cases at least).
So for me it's not that I feel like there's any merit in defending the lack of this specific feature, but more like I don't think there's a single piece of design that can fit absolutely any possible idea for a game to the degree that I would think it should be in every game that could exist.
I see what you're getting it! Like I said, my belief is also pretty fundamental in that each game needs to be considered separately, same with all features.
I completely agree with you on the auto-saving feature because that *is* a fundamental design change for any video game, there are tons and tons of games from the early 2000s and earlier that are intentionally designed with the idea that you have to manually save. It's a full and limited mechanic in the early Resident Evil games, and adding autosaving to those game would actually kind of destroy them. Then you have games like Dark Souls where autosaving is actually used to make the game MORE punishing.
So to that effect, I would liken autosaving more to the fast-traveling/teleporting mechanic I talked about. The only reason I wouldn't put something like autosaving in the same category with cutscene skipping is because cutscenes (traditionally) don't effect the interactive systems of a game, and if a cutscene DID meaningfully interact with a gameplay system somehow, then I would no longer really consider it a cutscene, but a form of interactivity and therefore gameplay.
HOWEVER I totally see where you're coming from. I think you're coming from a more "video games as an experience" standpoint, where a cutscene can add something the game developers could consider to be integral to the experience of playing the game, where skipping the cutscene would detract from the game. And I can totally see that. The only reason I would still argue for that feature though, and this isn't something I really touched on in the video, but on a first playthrough, the VAST majority of players aren't going to skip cutscenes. I would kind of assume anyone who skips cutscenes on a first blind playthrough of a game to also be the kind of person who might start a game with mods or someone who just doesn't respect the storytelling aspect either way. In which case those people have gone into a game not wanting to engage with a piece of art as it's presented and therefore probably don't really respect the intended "experience" in the first place, which there's not much you can do there. I feel like that person also may not even be likely to finish playing that game in the first place.
Otherwise, basically all new players will watch 100% of the cutscenes they are presented with in a game on their first blind playthrough. And to that effect, a lot of games don't let you skip cutscenes until a second playthrough. But again I'd still argue for giving the option to players on the first playthrough SOLEY because the player could very well have played the game before on another platform. Maybe they played it once on PC and then bought the console version once it came out, and in that case the console version of the game has no idea that they player has already experience the game at least once. Same goes for accidentally losing save data and all of that.
But I do fundamentally agree with you about every game needing to be considered differently so that's why I wanted to hear more people thoughts about the cutscene skipping thing specifically!
(Also I'm sure you can tell by how long my response is that I am super interesting in having conversations about this so THANK YOU for engaging in the topic!!)
@@peytonburnham4316 you're fine lol, it's a pretty interesting topic so I hope you don't mind if I put out another wall lol
And I'm glad to see my angle came out clearly. I like games that are just dumb fun but love when they offer a crafted experience so indeed that's where I was coming from.
It's funny though because the game I'm making doesn't have a skip cutscene feature not because of any artistic intention but simply because I didn't know how to implement it back when I was doing the cutscene framework and now that I would know how to do it I'm just terrified of touching that ancient code base so close to release an fucking something up lmao. And not like there aren't countless other more important things to deal with anyway either lol.
If I could put it in my game, I would make any cutscene skippable but only after watching it once. I think there's something to be said about how convenience can be abused to one's detriments. When I began to unlock Sea of Star's true ending I kinda wanted to get over it so I turned on all the relics that made the game easier and in the process screwed myself out of the best boss fights in the game. Now, I'm not comparing the scope of consequences of an actual game mechanic with those of skipping a cutscene, but even I, being a person that mostly plays games for their stories, have skipped cutscenes to my own detriment.
Unsurprisingly it comes down to the game's intent and purpose once again. If I know my game's priority is the story, and the players know that too. Then offering them the ability to skip the very thing I'm also stating is the main dish of the game would feel like a disservice to the game and to myself wouldn't it? Like yeah this game's story is great, it's the reason to play this game even, but also here, you can skip all of it. Even adding the option for those that don't care can affect those that do. I've skipped cutscenes that I felt were filler and spent the rest of the game wondering if I missed a character interaction I would have really liked, or if that thing that isn't making sense would if I hadn't skipped that cutscene.
There's this youtuber called Ratatoskr that has a video on difficulty options that's basically exactly how I think about these stuff. The gist of it is that no options IS an option. If every game had every QoL or difficulty feature, there wouldn't be a game without those things, and some people like not having those things even as options ie me. I would've had a much better experience with Sea of Stars without them. I'm not saying that SoS would've been a better game without those features, I'm just saying I would have had a better experience without them, which is enough to say that those features aren't objectively and universally good features to have all the time in every game.
Just to be clear here at the end, I'm not that invested on the cutscene skipping thing specially, I'd put a version of it in my game if I had the time. But I just don't think there's a single meta-feature that could be plugged into any game ever without disrupting the design or experience in at least some of those games. Kind of a proof by contradiction approach I guess.
@@keen96 Firstly, I very much appreciate the discussion so I'm all for the wall of text!! Second, YES not wanting to touch cutscene code because you didn't know how to add a feature to skip them is VERY fair LOL, it's why I wouldn't hold it against smaller indie titles for not having any kind of similar feature, It can be a LOT more complicated than people think. I was so stressed out adding cutscene skipping to the rose of starcross demo and i absolutely messed up some stuff and had bug problems so i totally get that.
And yeah again I totally see what you mean and agree with it. I especially agree with "not having the option is an option" especially when considering things like difficulty and gameplay settings. I still personally don't think I would extend quite the same amount of courtesy to non-interactive or static elements of a game like cutscenes. Mainly for this reason. Cutscenes that don't require interactivity also don't require the player to pay attention or be attentive (aside from quick time events, which despite generally being braindead simple, are technically interactive gameplay) (Also if your cutscene has story-changing choices that are important then that's also gameplay). But if a player can't even muster the motivation to just sit there and pay attention for a moment to the point where they will want to skip a cutscene they've never even seen before, they can just choose to not pay attention anyways - which is exactly what they are going to do if they would've skipped the cutscene had they been given the option. The player will probably go on their phone, go get a snack, or step away. And if the game is text-based and the cutscenes are non-automated they'll likely just start mashing through dialogue boxes while their eyes glaze over (or again, they're on their phone with the other hand), thus skipping story content anyways. And if the player has the self-control to not do those things when they're bored, they will probably have the self control and patience to just choose to watch the cutscene in the first place.
The point is that unlike with interactive elements that have fail-states or consequences, you can never truly FORCE a player to watch a cutscene, if they don't want to watch it, they won't. I've always kind of suspected that that's why AAA games adopted quicktime events in the first place, as a way to sort of snap the player back into paying attention. Which again, regardless of a general lack of depth technically is still interactive gameplay at that point.
So my point is, in that scenario, by trying to make the people who AREN'T enjoying your cutscenes to watch them and maybe change their minds, you're not only not going to make much of an impact on them but you're also neglecting that group of players who have already played the game in some way shape or form (again players who have maybe bought your game multiple times or lost their data).
And I think as far as the idea of the story being the main dish of a game's enjoyment, then I definitely don't think it does a disservice to the game to include that feature in the same way that I don't consider it a flaw that movies give you the ability to fast forward! Now we could definitely argue that it's not a necessary feature in that case, or that it'd be mostly useless and a waste of time/effort to implement it, but I definitely don't think it would make the game WORSE at all. And that's because of what I mentioned earlier, cutscenes don't take physical or mental skill to get through them, if your game (or movie) is purely based on story and the player/viewer wants to SKIP it, then they are playing the wrong game/watching the wrong movie haha and it probably won't take them long to just turn it off all together. Or again, they'll just stop paying attention and miss the intended experience regardless.
BUT all that being said, while typing this up I TOTALLY thought of a small instance in which not being able to skip a cutscene totally makes sense. In Ocarina of Time there is like a 15-20 second long cutscene of a character slowly moving out of the way of a door you have to go through, and it's clearly a joke that you have to wait that whole time while nothing interesting happens and you can't do anything about it. I think in a circumstance when you really want to annoy or bother the player it could be used there. I do however think for any positive emotions you'd want to elicit in a player probably wouldn't necessarily benefit from this since if it's a positive emotion that connects with the player effectively, they would have no reason to want to opt in to skipping it, otherwise it may double back and turn INTO annoyance or something like that. And to that effect, I feel like being overbearing with something like the Ocarina of Time joke does run the risk of annoying the player to the point of stopping playing lol but that's more of an argument of execution thing
I can't stress enough just how important a proper keybind settings menu. My vitriol towards keybinds that prohibit me from saving if i don't have some keys bound is insurmountable. A FOV and sensitivity slider without numerical increments also is baffling. I really dislike when I can't use the same key for different actions which is especially frustrating if I can't overlap when on foot and in a vehicle. I don't understand why not - I can't walk and drive simultaneously! A QoL feature that I always appreciate is having an 'X' next to keys to unbind them instead of holding down Esc. Halo Wars 2 has inarguably the worst keybind (and overall UI) menu rivaling that of MWII and MWIII! Halo used to be the pinnacle of quality-of-life user interfaces particularly Reach. You could navigate the menus simply with the analog stick without needing to also press A.
What is the proper word for the Fallout 4 loot menu that takes up very little screen real estate and automatically displays the loot?
Not related but m8 you have a fucking killer mustache. 1000/10
Thank you Legend 😎
No idea if you’ll see this but back in your branching dialogue in part 1, every time I press enter on the first textbox everything disappears. Do you know how to solve this?
i was watching a big game critic the other day and it seems that the prevailing opinion now is that every game should be skipped entirely. not that you shouldn't buy or play it, but that you just skip every part of the game until the very end because its too tedious to actually be engaged. you need to be able to fast travel passed all the obstacles and world building, you need to be able to skip every combat encounter, you need to be able to ignore the story entirely, etc etc. okay maybe thats a _little_ hyperbolic, but the idea that a game shouldn't engage with you on its terms or inconvenience you in any way unless you make active choices to do so is ridiculous to me. i don't care if someone else is too adhd brained to sit down and pay attention to a game, the rest of us shouldn't be brought down their level by default.
Ive always been fascinated by seeing you in real time on camera, good stuff btw i'll be sure to watch the whole vid lol
"Make the fail state quick and painless." Couldn't agree more! I quit playing Death Stranding early on because it took FOREVER to die.
Also, Super Smash Bros Melee had one of the best "confirm that you want to do this" control schemes. Pushing L + R + A + Start to leave a match was intentional, satisfying, and pretty fast once you got used to it. Wonder if a similar control scheme idea would be satisfying for skipping cutscenes
TOTALLY agree on the smash bros button combo! I didn’t mention this in the video but in Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101 you can skip cutscenes by holding the left trigger and hitting select and its SUPER fast
This is a great video, its making me think a lot about the design of my own game. Your channel is criminally underrated!
Thanks!! Glad I got you thinkin!
hmm... very thoughtful, thanks for the insight.
Holy crap dude! I don't know if you remember me but I've been watching your videos for a while now, but recently I've moved on to 3D so I haven't watched you in a while, but I decided to check in and now you're using a webcam!
Glad things have been going well for you (at least i think lol), Hope to see you get the recognition you deserve!
Yo!! Thanks man i appreciate it haha! Thats awesome you’re doing 3d stuff now, im thinking of dipping my toes in pretty soon after im done with my current big game projects!
@@peytonburnham4316 yeah, that'd be sick! Especially if you make a tutorial series like how you did with the RPG series. Ever since Brackeys retired (at least for now) it felt like there's been a hole in the community, and I think you'd be fit to fill it!
Also, it would be really cool if you worked on the more '90s-esque 3D game, mainly because I've been playing half-life so I'm pretty accustomed to that and I just like the style, but ur the boss lmao 😅
A problem I have with a skip cutscene button is when it’s too easy to hit on accident, so you may accidentally skip something important on your first run because of a small finger slip
I like the way the Resident Evil remakes have been handling it, by making you have to pause and then hit a button to skip, it prevents the issue and only requires an additional input compared to the alternative waiting/holding the skip button for an eternity at every cutscene
(I’m pretty sure RE4 remake has the hold feature as well as the two button skip for players who prefer using one over the other;
this is likely included because a core aspect of the games replaying them quickly and it makes everything super quality-of-life 😎)
Yep totally agree!! The newer RE titles are great examples of doing that the right way
I also really like it when a game allows you to rewatch cutscenes
@@complainer406 Yeah definitely having some type of theater mode is always great!
@@complainer406 if I’m not mistaken, the original RE4 has one of those!
new format? i'm down. good luck if this is where you're taking your channel. (just please also keep making tutorials because they're great)
Just a new type of video I might do every now and then, not stopping with the tutorials so don't worry! I appreciate the support either way!
the breath of the wild cooking example is really interesting, because point that you're making Makes Sense. and I don't think you're Wrong at all. it actually reminds me of two points in hbomberguy's video essay on deus ex: human revolution.
one being that the designers had intentionally limited resources for firearms because they wanted people to have to really think about how they wanted to Use those resources... only to then provide one hit kill items in front of every difficult enemy they wanted the player to kill. and the Other being a truly baffling series of vents throughout the entire map, that essentially made it so you didn't have to engage with the majority of the game. walk in a building and it's just vent into vent into vent. they were so concerned with letting Anyone play their game that they made playing their game Optional.
so I completely agree with the point, players can feel discouraged when the game seems to be asking them not to play it. when the most boring option seems to be the best one.
but ! it's interesting because with the breath of the wild example, I Have seen plenty of people _have fun_ with that feature. making memes and just generally enjoying being Able to cheese fights if they want. and I'm sure that Generally there are people who find it boring (the menu system in breath of the wild in general is pretty cumbersome), but it's also like ! I can see where that feeling Comes From. I can Get why some players really enjoy it.
and I think ! the difference is in the Perception of these features. the problem with human revolution is that it holds your hand. it feels being given an unplugged controller with a developer beats the level for you on the other side of the couch. but with breath of the wild it almost feels like Getting Away with something.
it reminds me of how insane the speedrunning scene in this game is, using the tools the developers gave you to the game to your whim. there's something To It, in being able to stand there and eat an entire meal between hits being comparable in Feeling to killing ganon with tree branches just to see if you can.
it's so hard from a development perspective, because this really Isn't something you can do on purpose. it's an Extremely delicate balance, and one that definitely Isn't universal between players
Yes!! I totally see where your coming from! If the problem was more pervasive throughout the game then it definitely wouldn't have the love and acclaim that it does, personally it's one of my favorite games and TOTK is only probably in my top 10. In fact, I mostly just wanted to focus on BOTW because it's such a huge game that so many people have played and are familiar with. I thought that might help drive the point home, where even a game that well made can have these little debatable hiccups.
I love that fact that you can do things like killing the final boss with tree branches and I love emergent mechanics like bomb launching and all that. My main point with how item healing spamming is a little different is the fact that it's just a little too obvious compared to the many other almost limitless unique-to-zelda avenues these new Zelda games provide.
But you're also totally right about many people enjoying it as well! I'd never want to imply that people don't or shouldn't enjoy that stuff for sure, it's just mostly about the thought experiment as a game designer myself and how I might want people to engage with a game that I personally made. So yeah I agree, not only is it NOT universal between players, but it's also not universal between game designers lol. But I think that's the funnest and coolest thing about sharing your perspective and having these conversations!
(Also thank you SO MUCH for the in depth comment btw I was really hoping to see some good conversation on this video!!)
I’ve been waiting for this video. I feel like the biggest example is some of Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters are ruined by QOL features. This is mostly a problem with the first game with getting rid of the inventory cap made inventory managment nonexistent. It also makes the Fat Chocobos in FFIII and FFIV pointless. It also makes grinding have absolutely no cost with the fast forward feature. These quality of life features completely ruin the balance of the games.
Oh yep yep I know exactly what you mean, I was thinking of bringing up the FF remasters. In the first game’s remaster do you have the option to bring back the item limit? Or has it just been removed outright?
@@peytonburnham4316 I have not personally played FFI remastered, but I don’t believe it does. I could be wrong, but I think they wouldn’t even consider it from a modern context as intentional in the game. In the other games it’s not really a big deal as you get a fat Chocobo, so it’s not that bad, but I felt the biggest strength of the original game was how well it was balanced, so I don’t even see a reason to play the remasters.
@@thomasffrench3639 Okay I get that for sure. I would kind of doubt they’d give you the option too, which really sucks. I think contextually as far as the the gamespeed ups, encounter disables, exp multipliers, always full hp, etc at least those are clearly not an intended part of the design of the game, basically like easy mode settings or accessibility settings that you really can fully opt out of and disable (at least you could totally turn them off in ff7 remastered as far as i remember). I still am not huge on those kind of features since I also think it isn’t in the spirit of how the games were originally made, but that inventory change is just a big no no for me for sure
Awesome video. My biggest problem with BOTW and TOTK is how much time you spend in menus, often mid-combat. Any QoL that cuts down on menu time is a huge plus
Yeah 100% agree. And I think ultra hand and Fuse are two of the coolest mechanics in a game I’ve ever seen, but since they both added so much menu time to the game i wouldve loved to see that streamlined a lot more
Could it also mean Graphical Upgrade?
Sweet video. You didn't ask, but an example of a bad quality of life change to me is taking out the tracking parts in Monster Hunter Rise. Now the monsters are displayed on your mini map from the start. I know the game is heavy on the combat, but I kinda thought that searching half the point of hunting 🤷
Oh interesting I had no idea. I played a bit of World back in 2018 so it's been a while, but that definitely was one of the more interesting parts of the game to me, the actual "hunting" lol. Yeah I'd be confident in saying I'd probably agree with you if I had more experience with the series!
great video and equally as great stache!!
THANK you!
Personally speaking, I do think games should implement something where you have to watch a cutscene the first time, but every time after that it's skippable, even if you reset the save file, heck, maybe it carries across save files.
Might just be because I've accidentally skipped cutscenes too many times, lol, but I think it'd be good.
Yeah I totally get that. I touched on it, but I definitely would prefer for more games to implement stuff like "hold button for at least 3 seconds to skip cutscene" or something like that because accidentally skipping a cutscene you've never seen is terrible.
But I still feel like they should always be skippable considering there's been plenty of times I've bought the same game I've already played on multiple platforms before, where in that case the game obviously wouldn't know that I've played it already
@@peytonburnham4316 Yeah, That's fair too
yo I just want to say that I've been making a game called Whirlwind using ur tutorials, and I just want to say thank u so much, because without you I would not be as far as I am. Can't wait for Rose of Starcross, and I hope that you check out mine when it comes out (Which will probably be in like 8 years lol)
Yo that’s awesome!! I appreciate it and I definitely can’t wait to play your game!
Qol
Is a sandwich spectrum
(Brutal difficulty to trivialize difficulty) or mechanics
Devs use qol to make cheating or unfair play hard or outright unnecessary by making the game easy or streamline ...its a answer to cheating
hey peyton, i just finished your textbox tutorial, works great thanks a ton, but how can i make the textbox appear when i am touching an npc and click space? I already have a player that moves and changed my talkbox sprite to the npc.
looking good!
I have the same keyboard as you but it’s black
I had never seen your face before. Thanks for the video
you should start a new gamemaker tutorial
I liked the potion drinking in TP. Equip menu was super fast like you said, and then without pausing the game Link had to do a potion drinking animation. It felt really good using a potion in the middle of a fight, and it wasn't completely free
Yeah using a potion mid battle does have a really cool and unique feel in the older 3D Zeldas for sure!
Rainworld is a perfect example of this. The survivor character is basically a sim where you are your character. There are very few tutorials because your character doesn't know what any of the creatures are or what the various pickups do. Your knowledge is his knowledge for better and for worse. The expansion is great but some of the QOL stuff that was added (like loading screen hints) slightly encroaches on that sim aspect, but I only really noticed when it was pointed out and you can turn it off anyway
SO RELEVANT TO ME RIGHT NOW. I’m literally right in the middle of playing Rainworld for the first time this past week, playing as the survivor. I’m so insanely jazzed about it, I think it may very well already be in my top 10 games. But yeah that’s very interesting, I definitely would also be turning off loading screen hints and anything like that. Rainworld is definitely the kind of game that I could imagine lots of people who try it would say its lacking QOL, but i think anyone that clicks with it knows that that’s the entire draw and magic of the game
Great job!❤️
Thank you! :)